Alex tried to suppress a chuckle without much success. “You’re not talking about that stupid curse thing, are you? How did that go? To rise from the ruins—what is born of the fires of hell cannot die. Some demented old man who was supposed to have mystical powers utters some ambiguous words as Great-Grandfather’s body is being sealed in the crypt and says the curse would come to fruition in one hundred years. I could understand some ignorant and superstitious villagers in the eighteenth century buying into all this curse stuff, but not a mere hundred years ago when all this happened. And now in the twenty-first century everyone is suddenly jumping at every shadow because of some coincidental explosion that probably has some very logical explanation.”

Donovan snapped out his irritation. “That’s not funny, Alex.” He stared out the window into the blackness of the night. Another tremor of apprehension rippled through his body, leaving him very unsettled. “Something extremely bizarre is going on and I don’t have any rational explanation for it.” And that included the blinding headaches that had attacked him several times in the past two months since the death of his father, like steel bands tightening around his head. They left him confused, disoriented and with memory lapses—and frightened about what it meant and what the future held.

The two men talked for a few more minutes, then Alex went to the room he had been occupying on his visits to the estate since he was a little boy. Donovan remained downstairs in the entry hall staring out a window, trying to force his eyes to see whatever it was he sensed lurking in the darkness.

The police had left a light at the site of the crypt explosion. He watched as fingers of fog crept across the ground, edging their way around the tombstones belonging to generations of the Sedgwick family—generations too numerous to count and, according to many, better left forgotten. The ground fog blanketed everything in a damp shroud just as it had that night a century ago. The light electrified the mist with an eerie spectral glow. A shudder swept through Donovan’s body, causing him to hunch his shoulders as if warding off a cold wind.

Donovan continued to stare out the window, lost in his own thoughts and unspoken fears. He wasn’t sure how much time has passed before the sound of the doorbell startled him back into reality. He opened the door to the late night visitor.

“You…you’re Taylor MacKenzie?” Donovan stared in disbelief at the beautiful woman standing at the front door, bathed in the soft glow of the porch light. He felt the tightening in his chest as a quick surge of heated energy darted through his reality. Something about her looked so familiar, as if he should know her, but that was impossible. No man with a spark of life in him could ever forget having met this vision who jolted his senses and nearly took his breath away. But still…he couldn’t shake the strange, almost overwhelming sensation of déjà vu.

To learn the truth behind her great-grandmother’s past—and the curse that still surrounded both her family and the old woman’s tiny country village—Taylor MacKenzie made her way to England. But from the moment she arrived at her ancestors’ manor house, an eerie chill echoed the evil of the past and a shadowy figure seemed to follow her every move.

Donovan Sedgwick, the new lord of the manor, had eyes that pierced Taylor’s soul and held her in an otherworldly thrall. But he seemed ravaged by demons of his own—demons that only her kisses were able to calm.